


Multifoliate Rose

by alientongue



Series: This Hollow Valley [1]
Category: Smile For Me (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Background Relationships, Flowers, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Illustrations, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts, Mentions of underage drinking, Team Bonding, mentions of medical procedures, mild body horror, peachblossom au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-02 09:26:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20273665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alientongue/pseuds/alientongue
Summary: “Ugh,” Mirphy says, her voice faintly muffled through the face mask. “It’s always so gross out here. Freaky brain-rotting flowers as far as the eye can see.”Dallas watches her side-eye a bright, blooming bank of vibrantly pink carnations starting to overflow into the cracked asphalt of the parking lot and tries not to notice the still form underneath the stalks. “Yeah.”The end of the world comes with not a bang but a whimper, and what's left makes its way to the Habitat.





	Multifoliate Rose

**Author's Note:**

> illustrations by [@frootrollup1](https://twitter.com/FrootRollUp1)!

“Ugh,” Mirphy says, her voice faintly muffled through the face mask. “It’s always so gross out here. Freaky brain-rotting flowers as far as the eye can see.”

Dallas watches her side-eye a bright, blooming bank of vibrantly pink carnations starting to overflow into the cracked asphalt of the parking lot and tries not to notice the still form underneath the stalks. “Yeah.”

Blinking a prickling out of his eyes, he turns, squints at the squat boxy shape of the bar their ink-and-napkin map had led to. It doesn’t actually look half-bad. Swarming in plants, true, but just about everywhere is these days, and at least the paint must’ve only recently started to peel off the stucco. “Mannn. Jim must’ve been here, like...a while. Looks like he took care of it all that time.”

The van door clicks dully shut behind them, followed by footsteps that would be inaudible save for the scuff of boots. “It seems so,” Trencil says. All the scars crisscrossing his face and neck have faded enough that Dallas can’t see them out of the corner of his eye anymore, but the short bob of his regrowing hair remains swept back in a style that lends itself better to length.

His mask clashes with the victorian air of his cape and billowy-sleeved blouse, not helped by the pair of fangs Dallas had absently doodled onto it beforehand. “I imagine upkeep was easier, not having to worry about the possibility of infection.”

Dallas’ brain dutifully takes the opportunity to remind him of what his fellow search party members and Habiticians had looked like overgrown and dopey with the contentment of it. “Yeah,” he says again, and winces.

Despite her complaining, Mirphy is the one to step forward first, fishing a rumpled napkin out of her jeans pocket to examine. “Lucky guy being immune, huh. This is definitely the place.” The makeshift map gets folded twice before being stuffed back. “Alright, let’s get this over with. Trencil, you…”

She turns to him, then pauses, expression unreadable behind her mask and the cat whiskers drawn onto it. “Well, nah, you don’t have to go first.” She and Dallas avert their eyes at the same time to pretend they don’t catch the relief flickering across his face. “But back me up, okay? Use that vampire strength to knock a hole in a wall besides the Habitat’s.”

Trencil faces the bar wall, lips pursed.

“If needed,” Mirphy quickly clarifies.

“Ah.” Trencil nods, then clears his throat. “Understood.”

As with most doorframes, Mirphy has to duck under this one, and Dallas is once again grateful both that he doesn’t have to do the same and that she remembered to duck this time. He, of course, then has to be pulled back at the elbow by Trencil, who motions to a scattering of shattered glass on the floor his foot still hovers over.

“Low-light vision,” Trencil explains, voice a vague but justifiable shade of self-satisfied. “Do watch your step in here.”

“Oh, uh. Groovy.” Dallas tilts to find purchase somewhere that isn’t likely to stab through his shoes. “Willlll do, man. And...thanks for the heads-up.” Survival is really not proving to be his forte.

With a little more electricity and habitation, the place feels like it could’ve been cozy: wood-panel walls, swiveling vinyl-cover stools lining the bar, dark mason jar lights hanging from the bare-beamed ceiling. Framed photos and posters and newspapers, pictures bustling with people and activity, pepper the walls at stylish intervals. Some of the prodigious assortment of bottles behind the bar are missing.

_Maximum occupancy: 106 persons_, a little sign by the door reads, but for now there isn’t a single one.

Mirphy has tentatively strayed to the right-hand wall. “Huh,” she says, craning her neck to survey the decorative photos. “Do you think Jimothan would mind if I took some of these? The composition’s not bad.” Without waiting for an answer, she’s heaving her supply backpack from her shoulders to one of the tables pushed against the paneling and unzipping it. “And who knows when I’ll be finding any other reference material.”

“I don’t think he would,” Dallas offers feebly, three pictures into Mirphy’s divestment of the wall. She gives a short, pleased _hmph_ and keeps working.

“Goodness,” Trencil’s wary voice rings from the threshold of the kitchen in back, “Ms. Fotoparat, Mr. Smuth, you may want to see—”

“Oooooh,” a loud, unfamiliar, slurring voice trills. “There’s more of you?”

Mirphy is straightening bolt upright before she even finishes shoving the last photo into the depths of her bag. Dallas freezes, glances from Trencil to her and back again, and tries to prod memory back into his head. “Uhhhh.” His voice comes out stiffer and lower than intended. “Who were we, like, looking for here again?”

Trencil’s eyes don’t waver an inch from where he has them fixed ahead with animal intensity. “An acquaintance and frequent customer of Jimothan’s,” he says. “A schoolteacher, prior to the mandatory shutdown. I believe her name was Jerafina Tabouli.”

Shuffling footsteps, followed by a squeal of delight. Trencil’s pupils constrict into slits. “Ohhh, that’s me! ‘M Jerafina. Or Miss Tabouliiii, if you want.” The voice, her voice, stumbles over every other word, lilting oddly. “‘Ve been so lonely here. Miss having lotsa pretttty people to look at. You’re pretty.”

The footsteps draw closer, Trencil edging back in turn as a woman’s silhouette wobbles into view. She giggles. “But youuu’d look even prettier with flowers,” she says, running a clumsy hand down the clusters of carnations bursting from the front of her split-open shirt, “d’you want some of mine?”

Mirphy hisses a curse under her breath. “This isn’t good. This really isn’t good.”

“At least she’s still talking,” Dallas says, through a feeling like being punched in the chest. “Trencil, mannnn...do you wanna…” He makes an ambiguous gesture with both hands, unsure what he’s trying to say himself.

Trencil inhales deeply. When he exhales, it takes the strange, animal tension through his body with it, only his eyes still slit-pupiled. “No thank you, Ms. Tabouli. But they are,” and he pauses, bridge of his nose wrinkling minutely in distaste, “_very_ lovely flowers. Marvelous.”

“Wicked,” Dallas adds, trying to breathe out the feeling from before and making a distant note to ask Trencil how he does it later.

“Beautiful,” Mirphy jumps onboard, though not without strain. “Great stuff.” The set of her jaw tightens. “We were actually going to ask if you wanted to show them off. To other people.”

Jerafina coos, one hand continuing to pet her flowers as the other rises to steady herself against the jamb. It misses, and she staggers forward, nearly falling over before catching herself ungainly on the edge of the bar. She’s not wearing shoes. “Well aren’t you jus’ the sweeeetest.” Her glasses are askew a few degrees away from slipping off her face entirely. If Dallas were closer and braver he’d adjust them for her. “Do these guys have flowers too?”

Dallas looks to Mirphy, who looks to Trencil, who looks to Dallas.

“...Yes,” Dallas ventures, and it’s technically not wrong.

* * *

Nineteen people, as it turns out, are a lot to manage.

Kamal runs through his mental checklist from the broad tangerine window of Habit’s office. Wallus’ last examination had been a few days ago, and he’d been clean as always; overkill or not, his gas mask seems to work. Rice Pilaf is shipshape, according to Borbra, and she is too after a little prodding. Tim Tam is unfathomable but recently-sighted, which is about as good as he’s going to get. Nat is indefinitely borrowing Trevor’s scavenged Ghibli VHS tapes, but that’s a problem for whenever he starts to complain. It would probably do both of them good if Kamal confiscated Grave of the Fireflies, though.

Food reserves are holding steady. Water reserves are holding steady. While chemical reserves are holding steady, they’ll still have to schedule a supply run soon or risk signing any number of death warrants should an emergency crop up, as emergencies tend to do lately.

Screwing his eyes shut over the throbbing behind his temples, Kamal lets his head thunk into the glass. It’s tinted from the outside and sturdy enough stuff that he doesn’t have to worry, which is good, since if he worries an iota more he’s probably going to...well, he doesn’t know. Explode. Collapse. Lock himself in his room and cry himself to sleep hoping something will be different in the morning.

For now he forces all of his thought onto the single note of the smooth, cool pressure on his sweat-sticky skin. Breathing has become manual, but that’s alright. He inhales, exhales. Inhales, exhales. His chest fills, deflates. His breath fogs the windowpane, recedes.

From the other room, the muted murmur of a cheerful voice to the tune of cheerful music stops, and Kamal is suddenly, surreally aware of how much he misses the background noise in the same instant as he recognizes it was there at all. The rhythm of his breathing stutters. He flounders for a moment in the silence, stumbling after the tempo he’s fallen out of time with, before footsteps echo across tile, louder and nearer until the door opens behind him.

Kamal concedes defeat and opens his eyes as he turns. “So...finished up one of those nightly PSA videos?”

Habit stands in the doorway, clad in his hat and dark, heavy coat. His puppet double sits on his wrist, clad in miniature of the same. “Maybee,” the puppet says, and between the thrown voice and the lip-syncing Kamal’s never going to get used to how good a ventriloquist Habit is. “It will need sum editing. Subtitels.” The corners of Habit proper’s mouth quirk faintly upwards. “We want to make everybody happy, after all,” Habit mini says, then opens its expressionless mouth wide in what Kamal nonetheless recognizes as a grin.

It’s contagious, if only partially. Kamal scrubs the cooled sweat off his forehead with a sleeve and chuckles. “Man, and I thought I grew out of puppet shows a couple decades ago. You’re something else, doc.”

The deep, bruised shadows under Habit’s eyes don’t translate over to his puppet. “I hope so,” he says from his own mouth this time, sliding the puppet off his hand and perching it delicately on top of the bookshelf well away from the messy strokes of various wall murals. “It’s...a bit sillie. But silly is good.” Though his glance is in Kamal’s direction, Kamal feels it go right past him and out the window. “Silley means you have room to be a person. Not jusdt a scared little animal.”

Kamal follows his eyes to the carnival below, where the distant shapes of Habiticians scuttle around. Judging from the statures of two of them, Borbra is trying to take Questionette birdwatching again. “I think I get what you mean.”

There’s a lowing creak and a half-ton sigh as Habit sinks into the old paisley loveseat they’d dragged into his office a while back. It kind of reminds Kamal of the one that used to be in his apartment, except not, because they’d had to burn that one with all the bodyjacking pollen he’d rubbed onto it through the course of several hazy months.

He joins Habit anyway, his weight yielding a slightly less protesting creak of its own. This close, the exhaustion is apparent in Habit’s posture, the way his frame is slumped into the cushions. His knuckles have been scrubbed reddish and almost raw with medical-grade soap. “Long day so far, doc?”

“Long,” Habit agrees, eyelids drooping. “Started at five-thirty. Parsley woake up.”

Preemptively, Kamal sucks a breath through his teeth. “Did he go back to sleep?”

“Nobe.” One of Habit’s hands has decided to bother his hair, twisting and untwisting pensive loops around his index finger. “Had a bad night. He sed he didn’t but he needed company.”

The mental image is perfectly, awfully vivid. Tomorrow Kamal’s taking watch duty. “Please tell me you slept before three.”

“I slept before three,” Habit repeats.

“When?”

He makes eye contact with the puppet across the room rather than Kamal next to him. “Before three.”

Kamal inches closer to him on the couch until their sides touch and rests a hand on his arm, squeezing just firmly enough to feel the skin underneath wool sleeve. “Boris,” he starts, but nothing he can think of sounds right after it so he only shakes his head.

For a minute, two minutes, maybe more, they sit. Martha rumbles near-inaudibly outside. Habit’s hand releases a sprig of hair to cover Kamal’s on his arm instead. He has calluses matching the hilt of a scalpel on the side of his thumb.

The wall-mounted intercom dings. Then it dings two more times, each in quick succession, and Habit scrambles to his feet so fast his hat shifts lopsided on his head.

It’d be funny if Kamal didn’t know down to his gut by now what one-pause-two means over the intercom. “Oh, hell,” he says, and drags the meat of his palm from the bridge of his nose to his forehead. “This is about the search party Jimothan wanted, isn’t it? They found her.”

Habit is at the mic on his desk already. “Dr. Habit here. I hear you.” Sliding open a drawer, he sifts through a small, jingling racket of paper clips and staples before snagging a thick rubber band of a hair tie. “How is she?”

“Uh,” Dallas’ voice crackles through the intercom. “Still alive. Notttt talking great, but talking.”

“Abundantly friendly,” Trencil’s voice joins in, none too pleased. “I suggest bringing a spare women’s shirt.”

Unable to help himself, Kamal laughs, the sound more disbelieving nerves than anything. “Well, here we go again, doc. Ready?”

“I hope so,” Habit says again, shedding his coat from the scrubs underneath.

* * *

After Trencil, Parsley had been more or less secure in the knowledge that the world would be hard-pressed to saddle him with a more taxing patient. In a way, he was right, since if this was a _singular_ patient it would be close to tolerable.

But this is not a singular patient. This is the combined rehabilitation of Gillis Socco and Randy Hapukurk, both of whom are extremely distressed to be physically separated and unable to re-infect each other’s wounds, both of whom are expressing that distress extremely loudly.

Arranging accommodations for them had been a lengthy ordeal of identifying the lesser evil. First attempt: both bandaged but otherwise unrestrained in the same room. Within less than a minute they had torn off much of the gauze and were attempting to do the same to the stitches before emergency sedation.

Second attempt: both bandaged, both restrained in the same room. Neither had escaped, but not for lack of frantic trying, and the _keening_—Parsley hadn’t known a human could sob that hard.

Third attempt: both bandaged but otherwise unrestrained in two rooms hastily separated by a windowed wall. That’d worked alright for a few minutes. Then Randy remembered that his boyfriend’s flowers were missing and broke the glass.

Final attempt: two rooms, no restraints, no glass. They’re upset not to see or touch each other, sure, but one can’t tell from a voice alone that someone’s no longer infected with peachblossom. Not until later in recovery, anyway.

“Gil-lis. Giiiiil-lis.” The mournful, offbeat croon drifting through the wall is accompanied by scrabbling noises. “Gillis, m, my...I...are you there?”

Flush with the wall, teary-eyed and wobbly-lipped, Gillis nods haltingly. “‘M here. Right here.” The hand he’s keeping pressed to plaster isn’t the good one, the one unscathed save for a few bruises where he pulled against the restraints. It’s the bandaged one, the one Habit had been forced to cut halfway apart to dig out the tendrils twining between his and Randy’s handhold. “Are you?”

Unwilling to subject himself to the third pitiful back-and-forth of the day, Parsley interrupts, “Ah...sir. Mr. Socco.” It earns him a brief, uncomprehending, darting glimmer of his charge’s eyes and not much else before they snap back to the bare wall. He tamps down a grimace, tries again. “Gillis?”

This time, Gillis’ eyes flicker between the door and the wall, brow furrowing before he evidently parses that his name does not exist in a Randy-shaped vacuum and settles on the door. “Yeah.” Slowly, minutely, his posture shifts, body peeled just far enough off the wall to be conceivably cognizant and accepting of Parsley’s presence. “You, you want somethin’?”

It’s not an invitation, but it’s the closest thing he’ll get, so Parsley steps inside and debates locking the door behind him. On one hand, it’s protocol; nobody needs a delirious patient roaming the Habitat proper. On the other hand, he’s reasonably sure that Gillis couldn’t be pried off the dividing wall with anything less than an industrial winch, and while in truth the idea of that strength backfiring on him is hardly unwelcome, he made Habit a promise.

Unlocked it is, then. He at least has this process down to a routine. “I brought you lunch, Mr. Socc—Gillis.” As usual, lunch is his dad’s doing, but not as usual, much more palatable of a doing. Dad better not have done this just for him, because he doesn’t want to think of Habit or Kamal having to attempt feeding recovering hosts the standard nigh-inedible garbage. He brandishes the plate in demonstration. “It’s...beef.” Probably. Hopefully.

“Huh.” Gillis tracks the movement for what could be generously called three seconds, then returns nebulous focus to Parsley himself. “Don’t want it.”

“He doesn’ want it,” Randy seconds through the wall, scrabbling with greater ferocity.

There are a number of arguments Parsley could employ to coax him gradually, carefully, and truthfully. Currently, he does not have the patience for any of them. “It’ll make your flowers grow back.”

Immediate, rapt attention, including from the patient behind the wall as the din of nails on plaster scrapes to a cringingly unpleasant halt. Blinking wide-eyed, Gillis doesn’t seem at all perturbed, only dumbfounded. “It will?”

Parsley sighs. “Yes.”

“Hey,” Randy says. His nails rake down the wall in one last, slow stroke. “I thought that’s what the...the thing from yesterday was s’posed to do.”

For the first time in days, Parsley’s heart skips a genuinely startled beat in his chest. Beginnings of long-term memory are a good sign, a really good sign, but not for him in right at this moment. Relief and apprehension tangle jarringly together. He gropes for an excuse in the abrupt blankness of his head. “It’s. A process.” Promising, so he spins it ahead before either of them can cut in. “It needs to build up before the flowers bloom, you know. Like the first time they grew,” he says, pinning the blankness over any memories threatening to bubble up.

Hope dawns visibly across Gillis’ face, an overjoyed noise warbling barely-human from the next room. Parsley holds the blankness firm with a white-knuckled grip and has to remember to let the plate leave his hands when Gillis snatches it from him, eating like an excavator digs. It’s a miracle he hasn’t choked by the time he lowers it and Parsley plucks it from his hands to replace with a thermos of water.

The water goes even faster, and Parsley heaves another, shakier sigh at the solace of a job finished. It’s the only one of a roiling emotional cocktail he can name. “Feeling better?”

“Uh-huh.” The hope across Gillis’ features has diluted to a dreamy sort of bliss as he relaxes back against the wall, thermos slipping from his hand.

Parsley takes it before it can fall. “I’m glad,” he says, throat tasting bitter and thick. He locks the door behind him once he leaves the room.

Kamal is waiting for him, smelling of antiseptic and laughing gas. His waves of hair are ruffled, as if freed from a ponytail but not brushed yet. “Hey, Parsley.”

“Hey, Kamal.” Parsley looks him over and steels himself. “Let me guess. Another one?”

His hand combs through the back of his scalp and does nothing to help the dishevelment. “Yeah. Your dad was right on the money.” There’s tired satisfaction in his eyes through the bloodshot streaks. “Saved her, though. Seems like she drank enough early on the alcohol stunted it.”

Voice still shaky, Parsley chuckles without humor. “Knew I shouldn’t’ve nagged Martin so much about that.”

Kamal flinches visibly. “Parsley, please don’t—”

“I know, I know.” He looks far to the left at Randy’s door. “You want me to bring her the usual once she’s all set?”

A beat of silence. “Please,” Kamal finally answers.

* * *

“Can I have a drink?” Trevor asks, swinging his feet where they dangle from the lounge bar stool nearest the jukebox.

Jimothan doesn’t even pause where he’s polishing a shot glass, like he’s been doing for the past half hour. Trevor’s not sure how many shot glasses he has. Trevor’s not sure if it’s even a different shot glass. “Kid, for one, stop kicking my counter.” The toes of his boots knock against it one last time, and Jimothan raises one unamused eyebrow. “For another, it’s not even six in the evening yet.”

Trevor slumps onto the elbow he’s rested on the bar, hair puddling into the cradle of his arms. “Parsley drinks before six in the evening.”

Now Jimothan pauses. “Listen, I was about to say you’re not even fifteen yet either, but…” The shot glass clinks against varnished wood as he sets it down to knead his temples. “How about we make a deal. You tell me the next time you see Pars doing that, I give you one drink, one time, just this once.” He fixes Trevor with a look that’s more exasperated than stern. “But nothing above six percent.”

Perusing the esoterically-labeled bottles behind the bar, Trevor pokes his tongue barely past his lips in thought. “Can I get a large?”

Jimothan snorts. “It’s not restaurant soda, kid.” In deft motions, he returns the cloth to somewhere behind his counter and brushes the dust from his hands. “That’s gonna be a no.”

From two seats down, Tiff offers a quiet huff. “Just give him a cooler, Jim.”

Her own glass is half-full of a deep, rich red liquid. The back of Trevor’s mind bristles on reflex, heedless of the times Trencil’s told him to stop making assumptions. “Are you having a cooler?”

She takes the glass by its stem and tips it gracefully enough that the liquid sloshes just below the rim, a more delicate maroon where the light filters through it. “Wine.”

Trevor’s played enough video games to know that’s still ominous, even coming from someone who isn’t a handsome long-haired noble.“I want a beer,” he decides, then catches Jimothan’s look again and fiddles with the end of his scarf. “...Please.”

Shrugging, Jimothan turns to the fridge in the corner. “Whatever you say. Just don’t blame me when it tastes like week-old…” He trails off at Tiff’s level stare, shakes his head, and tugs the door open with a _clunk_. “Nah. Bad enough I’m giving you the thing already, I don’t need to finish that.”

Appeased, Tiff takes a sip from her glass. Once her attention shifts to Trevor it feels a bit like his teachers’ did when he would bury his face in his baggy coat sleeves during class, toeing the line between reproach and concern. “Beer usually isn’t very good, you know. That’s what you drink for drinking’s sake.”

Trevor concentrates harder on twisting the loose threads trailing from his scarf. “Well. Maybe that’s what I wanna do.”

Both the reproach and the concern in her stare sharpen so fast behind her glasses that it makes his hair stand on end with the rush of guilty dread only judging adults can cause. “Trevor, look at me.”

After seconds pass and he doesn’t, only plasters on his best nonchalant poker face while unwinding a corner of his scarf with laser-guided focus, she sighs. “Listen, then.” The way her eyes scour his posture, there’s no way she doesn’t see how he stiffens like a wolf pricking its ears. “It’s not what you want to do. It’s not what anyone wants to do, whether they’re fourteen or forty.”

His stomach knots and he wants to retreat into his sleeves again. “Mhm.”

“Ah, geez…” There’s a faint creak, then a much louder one. She’s moved from her seat to the one adjacent to his, and in his peripheral vision, he spots her glass still in front of the former. Her proximity feels like those rare occasions he would have a neighbor at the lunch table, only much taller and more grown-up. “I don’t mean to scare you. I just want to make sure you’re okay.” She braces her elbows on the counter and leans into them as she talks, not quite as tall that way. “There’s more out there that can hurt you than peachblossom.”

The sound of glass on varnished wood is sudden enough to make Trevor startle straight. “Bad timing, huh,” Jimothan says, one hand wrapped around the glass. It’s more plain than Tiff’s glass, no stem or elegant curves. It’s also filled with a bubbly, sickly-looking yellow fluid.

Trevor blinks at it, remembering just in time to smooth his poker face down at the edges before it peels away entirely. “Oh.” He sniffs at it, and poker face or not, his nose wrinkles. “It’s bitter.”

Jimothan looks like he’s going to laugh. His eyes look like they already are. “It gets worse than that, kid. Enjoy.”

Tiff’s lips twitch slightly upwards. “Not to say ‘I told you so’, but.”

Don’t pout, Trevor reminds himself. Nobody can take him seriously when he pouts. “I’m not thirsty anymore.” He glances between them, hurries to finish before they add anything. “I’ll just wait a few minutes.”

Neither have time to respond anyway before the noises start again. Across the Habitat, someone is wailing. Except it’s not just someone, because even in pain, even howling like an animal in a wire noose, that’s Ms. Tabouli, as it’s been for the past half hour.

It’s ugly and raw and all but wordless. Anguished gibberish about flowers, at most.

Trevor closes his eyes and clenches his jaw until his ears fill with a strange ringing he’s not sure is actually sound. The jukebox blares a catchy dance track from the wall next to him. If the seats weren’t bolted to the floor he’d scoot his closer to it. “Do we have a louder song.”

Lips pursed, leaning more of her weight onto her elbows, Tiff shakes her head.

“Does the volume go up any higher.”

She shakes her head again.

Trevor would think that between the screaming and the music, it would be hard to hold a voice in his mind’s eye. The one looping through his head like a scratched CD of compliments on his test-margin doodles says otherwise.

Cans rattle inside the fridge as Jimothan slams it shut to face them. “Have you ever heard an old man doing karaoke?”

_In anime_, Trevor would say if his tongue wasn’t so clumsy in his dry mouth.

“No,” Tiff says, voice tonelessly level. “You’re not that old.”

“Well, that was last week. Now I’m ancient.” He presses a hand to his back in an exaggerated stoop. “Now I’ve got all sorts of arthritis and the only way to dull the pain is song.”

An edge of something vaguely appreciative creeps into the void that is Tiff’s voice. “Are you any better at it than before?”

“Not a bit,” Jimothan confirms.

And he’s not.

* * *

Humans are such funny, tricky people.

Carla likes them! Carla likes them very much! It’s their job, after all, to make sure all the humans in the Habitat are okay, to make sure none of them are starting to sprout sick-brain sick-body flowers, and Carla tries very hard at their job. So when one of the humans climbs the stairs to the terrace after dark, Carla follows.

It doesn’t sound like something a blossom-y human would do—those humans like sun, and lots of it—but when Dad made them and guided them with their fresh ink around the Habitat he pointed to the terrace railing and said it was there for a reason. A very very important reason. And this human is so tall, taller than the railing, which wouldn’t be as much of an issue if she wasn’t also so sad.

Footsteps make a person easy to follow. Carla doesn’t have them. They peek out from the top of the stairwell as the human walks forward, forward, forward, and they’re about to reach for their vocal link to Dad’s intercom when she stops. She sits down sideways right on the edge of one of the pool chairs and looks over the railing.

Carla lets the link drop back into the bottom of their thoughts and floats forward too. “Hello, Lulia,” they chirp, trying to exude a big happy smile from the static image of their drawn-on features. “Bedtieme was four-teen minutes ago! Are u having trubble sleeping?”

She jolts, eyes going wide and scared. That’s strange. Carla doesn’t think there was anything scary around, but just in case, they imagine their smile even wider. 

It seems to work, because once her eyes fall on them, a confused look replaces the scared one. Then a weary one replaces it, too. “Oh, Carla...you came searching for me?”

“I saw you go up the stairs,” they inform her. “No-body yusually goes up the stairs at night.”

“True.” She turns to gaze over the railing again, raising one hand in a distracted gesture as she does, and—oh! She’s beckoning them over! Something warm and scribbly crinkles their chest. They’ve never been beckoned anywhere before. “But there’s a lot to see, alone up here.”

Obediently, they hover over, and obediently, they follow the demonstrative sweep of her hand across the landscape. It’s dark, dotted with some lights but fewer than the last time Carla had seen. Flowers are a soft, moon-blanched mass carpeting all the lines of streets between rectangles of buildings. One of the rectangles is taller, flanked by hulls of cars, monolithic in the center of its own flowery ocean.

Lulia points to it. “Do you know what that is?”

Guessing games are fun, but this one makes Carla a bit nervous about losing. “Something emportant?”

Her mouth is smiling but her eyes are sad when she nods. “Right. That’s the town middle school.” Inch by inch, the smile droops away. “Was the town middle school. I don’t know if anyone there survived, besides…”

The scribbling feeling isn’t very warm anymore. Now it almost hurts, like it’s tied around Carla’s pins where each part of themselves connects. _Besides_ must be someone, but the question feels wrong forming in their vocal synthesizer.

They get an answer anyway. “Besides Jerafina,” she says, her fingers wrapped around the top bar of the railing. “And Trevor, I think...but hopefully Jerafina.”

A quick trawl through their recently-updated networks yields promising information. “Jerafina Tabouli’s operation proceeded successfully and with minimal complications.” They sway their head meekly sideways. “Doz that make u happier?”

She fixes them with the most piercing scrutiny they’ve seen from her in all her stay in the Habitat. “What if it didn’t?”

Their arms are beginning to wave in distress. “I do’nt know?”

Of all things, that drains the tension out of her. She sinks back into the pool chair, inhaling reedily. “You’re not lying, are you. You really aren’t just saying that to try and make me feel better.” Her breath is just as thin leaving her while she stares straight up this time, into the night sky. “Did you know there’s much less light pollution now? All of those people aren’t around any longer to use it.”

Carla cranes their body up and up to face the sky. It creases them a bit, but that’s okay. The stars are sharp and bright, like tiny crystals of quartz studding pavement.

“...Thank you,” Lulia says. “It does make me happier.”

They don’t know if they should stop looking at the sky, or if they want to. It’s hard to believe it was ever less bright. “Did yuo like Jerafina?”

Even without seeing her, their biometric sensors capture her body heat next to them. If they concentrate, they can feel it pulse in time with her heartbeat. “Oh, yes. Very much so.” She is so organic. They may be smaller, they may be made of paper, but in this instant Lulia is no less fragile than them under the weight of miles and miles of stars. “Not _did_. Still do.”

“Still do,” Carla echoes. Networks tell them there are roughly six hundred stars visible to the naked eye right now. On a new moon after the last lights in the town below go out, there will be roughly six hundred more. Their numerical processors refuse to identify the next value given. “Lulia, how maney stars are there in the wholl world?”

Surprise tinges her voice. “In the world? As in, all of the observable universe?” She falls silent. Then, more gently, “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

They persist. “Will Jerafina kno? She waz a teacher.”

At first, they can’t register the noise Lulia makes. It’s short and choppy, rising and falling in pitch but not within the ranges indicating displeasure—until they finally look back down to her and she’s _laughing_. They’ve never ever heard her laugh before. “Goodness, no. She taught English, not astronomy.”

All the warmth from before is back, happy warmth, scribbly warmth, broad-smile made-someone-laugh warmth. They can’t giggle but they make a sound pretending like they can, and Lulia only looks alarmed for a second. “Did she teaech good Emglish?”

She shoots them an amusedly unreadable look. “Well, it’s definitely material you could use. You’ll meet her soon enough, right?”

“Right,” Carla agrees, and watches how the starlight mingles with the wash of orange warmth from Dad’s office.

**Author's Note:**

> when i came up with the peachblossom au about a week ago, i was not at all expecting the warm reception it would get on discord - i can only hope that readers here enjoy it as well!
> 
> i've always enjoyed scenarios that take a quieter, less violent approach to the idea of an apocalypse, so i did my best to blend this concept with the lovely and vivid world LimboLane created. Smile For Me's characters were my favorite part of it and i can only hope i've done them justice, however strange of a universe i've put them in!
> 
> if you enjoyed the fic or would like to talk about the au, we have an open discord server [here](https://discord.gg/xqrDdYD)!


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